Written By : William Teach

I’m not even sure how to start the preamble for this. Perhaps it is best to go with that old Futurama standard “huh what?” Population control is not what makes climate change a feminist issue

Last week Mary Fitzgerald argued that climate change is a feminist issue on the basis that population control is a way to prevent the situation spiralling out of control. And, she posited, this could be achieved by giving more women more autonomy over their own bodies, through improved access to contraception and abortion.

I’m not going to get into the arguments around whether population control is a good solution to climate change. Others have already done so; George Monbiot’s piece barely more than a month ago, for this newspaper, is a great place to start.

Ensuring all women have full reproductive freedom and reproductive justice is a necessary goal in its own right moving towards a more equal and just world. I get that it might be tempting to hitch this issue to climate change, which has so much political capital.

I thought she wasn’t going to get into that issue, which she discusses for two more paragraphs after the first three? Anyhow

But Fitzgerald is completely right that climate change is a feminist issue. Everyone stands to suffer if climate change is allowed to spiral out of control, of course, but a gender analysis of both the impacts and causes of climate change shows that globally women contribute less to the problem and yet are likely to be hit especially hard.

Poor people are likely to bear the brunt as the climate changes and 70% of the world’s poor are women. According to one estimate, 85% of the victims of climate disasters are women. Another study found 75% of environmental refugees are women. (Statistics from the Women’s Manifesto on Climate Change).

Gotta love the source of the study. Here’s a clue for you, Ms. Jesse McAbe: you enact all your crazy global warming plans, and the women in the poor countries will suffer way, way, way more.

After some more qubbling about how this is a feminsta issue, we end with

So, yes, climate change is a feminist issue; women are on the front lines of climate change impact and need to be part of creating solutions. And women all over the world are in dire need of access to full and real reproductive justice. But linking the two by advocating population control as a solution to climate change isn’t the way to achieve either of these aims.

Only in Liberal World can we link access to abortion around the world to globull warming. Sigh.

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